Stretch Time

My masseuse told me again, the other day, I need to stretch. A guy at the gym who gives me workout advice once in a while said I need to stretch. Yeah, sure.

I hate to stretch. I don’t know why. My tendons get tight, and my muscles crave a good stretch. The older I get, the more I need to stretch out. And, the more hours at the gym should mean that I also need to spend some of that effort into stretching. I see other people do it, but, well, I guess the simple answer is that I’m lazy.

My first task in the morning is to make coffee. From a husband’s perspective, its probably the most important household task I do. More important than picking up my clothes, doing the dishes, or cooking dinner on the weekends. More important than garbage night. It also starts the day going and allows us to be civil with each other as we start the day with the paper and COFFEE.

I always use filtered water, and it takes a few minutes for the water to run through the filter into the pitcher. It doesn’t take too long, and I’ve tried to occupy that time by fumbling through assembling the coffee pot innards and emptying the dishwasher.

Now, though, I’ve incorporated coffee making into my daily fitness regimen. Once I fill up the water filter pitcher, I use that time to stretch. I stretch upward to the ceiling, making my arms, back, and shoulders find their kinks and aches, and work out some of the knots. Then, I work on the legs and the butt, pulling on the tendons a bit, and feeling the resistance of all the tight leg muscles. I finish it all up by grabbing onto my ankles and stretching out my quads.

I’m sure its not a pretty sight, my butt up in the air, or me trying to imitate a flamingo in the Everglades, pulling back on my leg with one hand gripping the edge of the kitchen sink, those tight muscles in the front of my leg aching and pulling. No one is around, thank God, and even the cat has the grace to be eating his breakfast or finding his favorite perch in the living room, so he won’t have to look at my contortions.

All this stretching and moaning doesn’t last too long, and the coffee water moves fairly fast through its filter. Its just a few minutes and I can endure it, I think. I’m not really awake, anyway, and maybe its just a bad dream, before I really wake up and have coffee.

Its good to get the worst of the physical exercise part of the day out of the way early, before I am fully awake, before the caffeine hits the blood system. I’ve made my masseuse and my buddy at the gym happy, and I can actually feel the difference in the old body after I’ve done my gyrations in the kitchen.

And, maybe my cat really is laughing at me, behind my back, as I push my face down close to the floor, close to the toes I rarely get to see, as the sacramental water drips down, ready to be turned into the morning reward for all this work.